BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - If compliments make you uncomfortable, this would be a good time to turn the page or click the back button on your browser.

Because the Alabama football team leads the nation in compliments, and that has to make Nick Saban squirm.

Ole Miss wildcat quarterback Randall Mackey called the Crimson Tide “the best of the best.”

Tennessee coach Derek Dooley called them “a great team.”

Missouri coach Gary Pinkel called them “maybe the best team I have ever seen.”

Former Auburn coach Pat Dye said, as far as he’s concerned, there’s no maybe about it.

Wow. A team wins seven games, leads after every quarter in every game, scores no fewer than 33 points and allows no more than 14 in any game, and all of a sudden they’re the 1927 Yankees.

Danger, Nico Johnson.

The more opponents build you up, the more they’re setting you up.

See Dan Mullen, loving every minute of it as he preps his slingshot for Saturday night in Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Mississippi State coach tossed another bouquet onto the pile when he said, “Everyone on their roster is a four- or five-star prospect.”

Not really, but why let facts get in the way of a good story designed to help the Alabama players believe the hype. The hype has gotten so thick, they have to work at not believing it.

Look at the line on Saturday’s game. Alabama and Mississippi State are both 7-0. They’re both ranked. Neither has played an imposing schedule to date. Alabama’s four SEC wins have come against teams that combined have three conference victories. State’s three SEC victims have yet to win a league game.

And Alabama, at last check, was a 24-point favorite.

It’s not easy to win a BCS championship, but Alabama has made it look easy so far, which means one thing. A hard time’s coming.

It might be only one game. It might not be this game, but it’s going to come. It doesn’t matter that Alabama leads the nation in five of the NCAA’s 17 official team statistical categories. It doesn’t matter that Alabama has played 420 minutes of football this season and trailed for exactly 15 seconds, or as long as it took Christion Jones to take that kickoff to the house against Ole Miss.

It doesn’t matter that Alabama is the No. 1 team in the nation. No one lifts the crystal football without having to lift himself out of the dirt along the way. The SEC’s string of six straight BCS championships proves it. Just go down the list.

The 2006 Florida team lost at Auburn.

The 2007 LSU team lost twice in overtime, including the final game of the regular season.

The 2008 Florida team lost at home to Ole Miss.

The 2009 Alabama team needed a blocked field goal on the final play against Tennessee and a long touchdown drive in the final minutes at Auburn.

The 2010 Auburn team needed overtime at home against Clemson and a comeback for the ages against Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

The 2011 Alabama team followed a similar blueprint. It wasn’t challenged until it was. It didn’t have to grind into the fourth quarter until it did. It didn’t come close to losing a game until it actually lost a game, at home in overtime to LSU.

While one Alabama player after another is making the cut for national individual awards, and the Alabama team is trying to take Mississippi State seriously, that LSU team, which has shown the ability to get up after getting knocked down, is getting rested and ready for Nov. 3.

There’s a good chance that sometime in the next two games, Alabama is not going to score first, or it’s not going to lead after every quarter, or it’s not going to play from the lead for almost 60 minutes.

There’s a very good chance that sometime in the next two weeks, this season that’s been so easy on the scoreboard is going to get harder than it’s been at any moment in any of the first seven games.

While it would be nice to avoid it, to play 14 games without any real duress, that’s not reality, not even for the best team in the country. So what this Alabama team really needs is a good shot in the mouth, and the sooner, the better.

Better in Tuscaloosa than Baton Rouge.

Better against Mississippi State than LSU.

Alabama is better than both teams and should win both games, but if it rolls through the Bulldogs and the Tigers without incident, it’ll only delay the inevitable struggle against Florida or Oregon or Kansas State.

Unless this really is the best college football team Pat Dye’s ever seen.

Drop a civil comment below. Write Kevin at scarbinsky@gmail.com. Follow him at www.Twitter.com/KevinScarbinsky. Listen to him weekdays from 6-10 a.m. on the Smashmouth Radio Network on ESPN 973 The Zone.